Pets such as canines and felines have been fed “dry” and “wet” diets for many years. “Wet” diets are generally packaged in a can-like container. They are “wet” in appearance because of the moisture therein. Generally two types of wet diets are presently prepared. One is usually referred to in the industry as ground loaf. This is generally prepared by contacting all the key components such as the meat together with water and then heating and mixing together in a series of apparatuses, or one apparatus, such as a thermal screw cooker/mixer. In this manner all of the major components as well as the minor components such as colorants, oils, vitamins, and vitamin-like materials are combined at an early preprocessing step and all processed together. Following this procedure an essentially homogeneous, intracellular honeycomb-type (hence “ground loaf”) mass is produced which is readily packaged into a cylindrical container.
A second wet diet is generally referred to in the industry as “chunk and gravy”. An example of this diet is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,791,002 (Baker et al.) This wet diet is usually produced by grinding meat, mixing, emulsifying, and then mixing the meat further with water, oil and grains and other materials if desired. This mixture is then fed into a cooking apparatus, emitted therefrom, cut, cooled and then sent for various stage fills. Usually in a two-stage fill, a gravy is added to the chunk. The gravy is prepared in the usual manner, for example, by mixing grains, modified starches, water, vitamins, if desired, and other materials into a mixing tank wherein it is heated and then fed to the container holding the chunky materials. As opposed to the ground loaf, this diet has physically separated, discrete chunks-pieces of the ground meat and grains as prepared. These discrete particles are present in the gravy-type liquid in the final container. The product produced by “chunks and gravy” process has been used in pet food for many years.
In the manufacturing of canned pet foods, specifically the gravy, highly hydroxypropylated waxy corn starches are often used to provide retrogradation stability and textural quality to the final product. This starch must also withstand high temperature retort processing. However pet food manufacturers have indicated that high hydroxypropylated distarch phosphate starches in the pet food grade often causes the pets some degree of gastric intolerance, resulting in a higher likelihood of loose stool. Thus, there is a need for alternatively modified starches that remained unmet until this invention.